Bridies- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridie made with our own buttery flakey pastry and locally sourced ingredients
Who owns Dunbar Community Bakery Ltd?
We are owned by over 550 shareholders, mostly local people who live in Dunbar and the surrounding area with a handful of supporters in far flung places. The public can still buy shares in the bakery (or give us a donation.) This helps us continue to invest in equipment, which works up to 18 hours a day, 6 days a week all year round.
Who runs Dunbar Community Bakery Ltd
DCB Ltd is a community benefit co-op and a registered as Industrial and Provident Society and authorised by the FSA. There is a Management Committee, which can have up to 15 members, which are elected by shareholders. The Committee members work mostly full time and all give their time completely free to Dunbar Community Bakery in a volunteer capacity. We are immensely grateful to past and present members for their generous help, advice and practical support.
Who bakes the bread then?
Our team is headed by Ross Baxter. He comes from a family of bakers and learned about baking at his Uncle’s knee. Not only can he produce superlative artisan bread effortlessly, he is a top patissier and has worked with Michelin starred chefs and is Scotland’s Patissier of the year.
We have two other highly skilled bakers, Natalie Helen our young but extremely competent night shift baker – she produces all of our quality artisan breads as well as other bread based products from Chelsea buns to Italian style Focaccia and Pavel Broz our Senior Baker/ Supervisor who makes delicious savoury products as well as covering the night shift on Natalie’s nights off.
We have up to four young trainees, who work in the back and front of house. In the front of house, Campbell Paterson leads and is supported by anything up to 6 part-time sales staff.
Did you get additional funding?
We have raised almost £50,000 as equity from shareholders to help finance the business. In addition, we received several grants and loans, including the EU Leader Fund, Investing in Ideas (Lottery), East Lothian Council. These sources of finance are also available to other social enterprises. However we do not receive any subsidy towards the day to day running costs of the bakery. We have taken out commercial loans to help establish the business from the Co-op (ICOF).
Quality not quantity?
We are an artisan bakery – that means that we bake in the traditional way. We only use top quality ingredients. Wherever possible, these are sourced locally. We do not use packet mixes for our breads and cakes, no artificial additives, nor magic improvers. Our bakers are extremely skilled and make all of our products by hand mainly using slow fermentation and sough dough starters or very small quantities of yeast. The production techniques used by many other bakeries and supermarkets involve short cuts and add artificial ingredients to make their products cheaper and faster to produce.
Not cheap then?
Since Head Patissier Ross Baxter joined the team in early 2012, we have focused on providing higher quality products and some of our prices have increased. Partly this reflects the cost of making top quality products by hand with wholesome natural ingredients, partly prices of ingredients are going up. However, our artisan bakery and patisserie is competitively priced compared to the City close by and we bake a daily range of delicious products at very affordable prices too – accessible to all pockets - without compromising on quality.
Are you in the money?
We are a new business – we only opened on 6 October 2011. We hope to generate profits in the longer term. But unlike other businesses, our profits will be ploughed back into the community, training even more young people, working with the local schools and investing in other local food initiatives. None of the profit from this community-owned business will be distributed to shareholders – our profit is for the benefit of the community not individuals.
Shareholders are entitled to a 10% discount on all goods purchased from The Bakery Dunbar, but we find that many don’t take advantage of this! We are grateful for their continuing support.
Like a family business we work all hours to try and make it all work out, but we have a remarkable and unusually large extended family who support us. Thank you.
Where can we get some press quality pictures?
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NB. The new picasa cum Google + system requires a workaround to download the images using the Chrome Browser. In ‘Settings’click the apps/extensions link. Click the extensions tab. Search: ‘Original Picasa’ Install the extension. Now when you right click, it will show you a ‘download original image’ option, which seems to work.
We’ll add to these as and when we can!
Recent Press Releases
PRESS RELEASE – Dunbar Bakers Among Britain’s Best V1.1
PRESS RELEASE 23Nov12 – How far will community bakery go V2.1
